The Characters and Similar Themes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and A Streetcar Named Desire - Essay Example

?The Characters and Similar Themes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and A Streetcar d Desire Characters and themes of differing genre of literature, at some point, have unconscious similarities with one another. These similarities among literary genres are depicted by The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a novel written by Milan Kundera, and play, A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams. There are three basic themes that are present in the novel and the drama. As I see it, the most prominent theme in the two stories is the infidelity and the sexual desires to the opposite sex of the main characters. Another theme that I think is necessary as the stories unfold is the dependency of women on men and the male dominance. In my opinion, these themes are also the essential ingredients in order for the characters to unfold as the stories slowly progress. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas, as one of the major characters in the novel, was once a successful surgeon who wants to live and govern his life according to his will. In the context of infidelity, Tomas is dependent on his illicit affairs. Similarly, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, shares Tomas’s sexual desires to the opposite sex. She considers her numerous affairs and inclination with men as her source for pride and confidence. Also, Tereza, the wife of Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, together with Stella and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, shares their common dependence on men. Furthermore, Tomas and Stanley, the husband of Stella, share male dominance over their female counterparts. With this on hand, along with comparing characters from the drama and novel, the paper will also dwell on the similar themes of the two genres. As I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I immediately recognized Tomas, who was a 40-year old surgeon in Prague, Czechoslovakia, as a person with strong sexual inclination to women. In the beginning, due to the denouncement of his license, he was forced to take on a different job. Prior to that incident, as I went along to the story, I have learned that he had divorced his wife, and they had a son. However, he decided to end his communication with them because his ego cannot live on to bribing his ex-wife in order to gain the love of his son. I think his decision is right; I believe raising a son alone is hard, but bribery would not get the relationship further. In my opinion, a woman must recognize the importance of the presence of a male figure while a child is growing up. It is important to note that when parents separate, the person that will suffer the most is the child. In another light, Tomas’s physical desire for women is still intense, which caused him to create a purely “erotic friendship” (Kundera 7) with them. He describes his desire for women as: “either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years, but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart” (Kundera 7). In a woman’s point of view, Tomas’s manner of handling women is unfair because he only wants pure physical pleasure not even recognizing the emotional needs of his partner. I feel pity towards the women whom Tomas had played around. It is as if Tomas does not have any respect at all to the women. However, as I continue to understand Tomas, the control he shows towards women is inherently a womanizer’s act to fool himself. As I understand Tomas’s history, this had made him fearful of women maybe because he knows that women are capable of controlling men. He is hiding his fear towards women in the manner of controlling them in order for him to dispose of them easily when his fear arises. He rationalizes that he is unfaithful to his wife in only in a physical manner, and that he will never love anyone else. He believes that his sexual endeavors are not considered as acts of crime. Furthermore, he certainly never knows what he wants, which in my opinion, also brings his character as a non-committal person. I think his fear of commitment drove him to be what he is. On the other hand, as I look into the characteristics of Blanche from the play A Streetcar Named Desire, I pity her because of what she had been through with her husband. It have undoubtedly pained her to see her husband with another man in bed, from which I will also feel the same way. However, the anger she manifests becomes the cause why her husband succumbs to suicide. Maybe if, I was in her case, I would not know what I will do in order to combat the feeling of guilt and sadness. Nonetheless, Blanche copes up with it by having affairs from one male partner to another. As I look at it, this is her way of finding assurance that she is a desirable woman even though her husband used to desire men. She uses sex in order to gain the attention and the affection of men, which I believe is an extremely desperate act a woman would do. Furthermore, her appearance, as she believes brings “...magic” (Williams 130) to her. She wants to be desired by men, and she wants control them in order for her to gain acceptance. She describes herself as “always depended upon the kindness of strangers” (Williams 89) during her brief acquaintances with strangers where she gives sex and in return is taken cared. In my opinion, Tomas and Blanch represent the male and female dominance over the opposite sex with their different characteristics and ability to lure them. Tomas uses his intelligence, wit, and chivalry in order to charm women. On the other hand, Blanche uses her sophistication, beauty, and hides beneath the mask of fragility to gain the attention of men. However, I believe that the difference of these two characters is their reasons for doing such act of profanity. For Tomas, I can see that he desires one woman to another because he has a fear of commitment. His acts are purely physical in a sense that he never considers any of the women he sleeps with as an emotional partner. He creates a wall between them in order to distant his emotions and focuses on the pure physical pleasure he feels. On the contrary, Blanche uses her sexuality in order for her to be desired by men. She focuses on her physical appearance, and she also acts timid to depict her persona as fragile. In my understanding, she acts fragile in order to make men believe that she, as sexually desirable as she is, shies away from men. As I see it, the two characters are important examples in order for people to hold their judgments to certain individuals in society. In exploring and understanding the experiences of the characters, I realized that, at some point in my life, I will meet people with similar actuation that I must not judge at first hand. This is because these people might also be just a victim of their past. On the other hand, as I went through the drama and the novel, another recurring theme that I noticed is women’s dependency towards men. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza, the wife of Thomas, is totally dependent on her husband. Even prior to their meeting, I can imagine Tereza daydreaming for a knight who will save her from her dungeon. I can see that she is desperately in need of a person to bring her out of her situation, and when she met Tomas, she found the knight in him. I, at some point in my life, have also dreamt of someone who can give me the world, but as I see Tereza, she should have taken precautious efforts first. Nonetheless, she is too eager to be swept on her feet and immediately decides to offer her life to Tomas. In my assessment, Tereza is particularly much clingy on Tomas because when she was young, her mother never gave her a chance to be a young woman. As her mother paraded her naked body, so did Tereza, which led her to hate her mother, or any other woman for that matter. This maybe then caused, in my own understanding, her undeniable need for her husband or a male figure to rescue her, not only from her mother or her job, but also from her fear and shame. Tereza may have thought that only a man can help her be free from her past. Aside from this, I also saw her dependency towards her husband when they moved to Zurich. She confirms her dependency by saying: “she was dependent on him for everything. What would happen to her here if he abandoned her? Would she have to live her whole life in fear of losing him?” (Kundera 38). I also do not commend her by not living Tomas even though she knew of his illicit affairs. As a woman, she should have depended on herself first rather than preoccupying her life with Tomas with misery and pain. However, I know it is easily said than done because she is deeply in love with her husband. She stays and do what she has to do as a wife, which is to wait for her husband after her rendezvous with other women. Even though she already has nightmares and is already hurt of the doings of her husband, she never leaves him and still feels needy of him. Women’s dependency towards men is also present in the characters of Blanche and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. At the beginning, I already knew that Blanche is totally dependent on men, especially in boosting her self-esteem. She is at first dependent on her husband because he gives her what she wants. Sadly, when her husband cheated on her with a man, she became more aggressive towards the males. I think this event led her to believe that she needs a man in order to feel wanted and complete as a woman. In this case, I believe she took the wrong route in coping up with what had happened to her. At first, I saw her as an extremely desperate woman who uses sex in order to get the affirmation and affection for men. However, my heart was with her as I understood her desperation. In my opinion, Blanche becomes more aggressive or open to having multiple partners because of her guilt and hatred. She ignores what other people might say about her as long as she has the full attention she wanted. Also, as the story unfolds, she then looks up to males not only for the emotional and physical affirmation, but also for the material needs. I was really saddened that she is already hallucinating in calling her former lover, Shep Huntleigh, to save her from being broke. Aside from this, she also looks at Mitch as another way out from the mess she is in, stating that: “I want to rest! I want to breath quietly again! Yes––I want Mitch...very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem...” (Williams 47). In the light of Stella, she depends much on Stanley for familial and sexual support. I can see that she is also sexually attracted and dependent on her husband. Also, Stella, as a wife and a mother, is dependent on her husband for financial and emotional support because she has nothing else to run for help. She left her family and chose to live with Stanley. Her husband, as the breadwinner in the family, is also her only source to be able to live and sustain for her child. She is totally dependent on Stanley that she rejects Blanche’s accusations that her husband raped her. Nonetheless, nowadays, women’s dependency and abuse towards women are slowly decreasing by number because of the modernization of time. However, it is still inevitable that, in other corners of the world, women are still being controlled and abused. Nevertheless, as a woman, I would rather stand up for my rights and stand on my own. The goodness of the modern era of today is that women are most likely to be independent and are aware of their strengths and capabilities. Compared to the ear when the novel and the drama were written, women were still considered as part of the minority groups. Furthermore, I see women’s dependency on men as one of the recurring themes in the novel and play, I also recognize that male dominance is also present. In this manner, I come to realize that if a woman is dependent on a man, she will most likely experience abuse or dominance from men. As Tereza’s character unfolds, I then learned that Tomas is dominant over her even in her sleep. She recalled a nightmare that he “...kept giving us orders. Shouting at us. We had to sing as we marched, sing and do kneebends. If one of us did a bad kneebend, you would shoot her with a pistol and she would fall dead into the pool” (Kundera 10). Also, in my opinion, maybe she never is able to leave him even with his infidelity because she does fear her husband. Recalling that, she never has the courage to disobey Tomas in the span of their relationship. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley exhibited his power over Blanched when he raped her. As I understood it, the male dominance depicted in the play is partly physical and emotional. I saw the physical male dominance when Stanley raped Blanch. I saw the emotional dominance or manipulation of Stanley towards Stella when he lured her to send Blanche into an asylum. He is able to manipulate Stella in denying the allegations of Blanche, which is for me an awfully blatant manner of male dominance. As I see it, it is evident in this theme that males are capable of controlling women in whatever manner they use. I believe that wives must be submissive to their husband, but I oppose the submission and fear that the female characters portray because of their fragility towards men. Nonetheless, as I have stated, the two pieces were written in a different era which portrays women as the oppressed and men as the oppressors. As I recognized the similarities of the themes of the two stories, I was able also to look into the characters. The theme unfolded as the characters also unfolded, evolved, or changed in the course of the two stories. As I see it, almost all the main characters have experienced sexual desires and control, which I believe has been depicted in the two stories properly and evidently. In the case of the main female characters, Tereza, Blanche, and Stella, they all are dependent on men for their happiness, success, and even living. The female characters depict the need of women to be provided by men. Also, the male dominance is evident in both the stories as it is portrayed very well by the main male characters. I strongly believe that even with the differing genres of the stories, both manifest the same themes, and these themes are properly depicted by the characters of the stories. Works Cited Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Madison, NJ: The Shakespeare Theater of New, 1985. Print. Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. London: Methuen Drama, 1947. Print. Read More